kindling
by the red feather
Summary: Ursa is a true daughter of fire. The early life of a princess of the Fire Nation. firebender!ursa.


Ursa of the Fire Nation is the eldest child in a family of sons, daughter of an admiral and a lesser noblewoman. She grows up reciting the Oath of Loyalty – _my life I give to my country, with my hands I fight for Fire Lord Azulon and our forefathers before him –_ mindful of the fact that she has a duty to her country, though how she will fulfill it remains to be seen. Cursed with the misfortune of being a daughter rather than the expected son, it becomes apparent to her early on that she is not worth much to her parents. She has friends who are daughters born after sons. They are blessings to their families, beautiful decorations to hang on a complete family tree.

She is a daughter born in place of a son – she is, as she knows her mother complains to her maids at night, "the weed that kept the tree from growing."

When she passes the age of five without displaying any potential for the art of firebending, her lack of worth only becomes more and more clear. That, at least, might have saved her from invisibility.

The night that her first brother Jian is finally born, after years of failed pregnancies, while her mother is fawning over her new son and her father is drinking to the child's good health with his soldiers down by the Ember Island harbor, Ursa sits on the cliff face and _knows_, even at six years old, that if she was unremarkable before she is invisible now.

She tries to think of ways to make her parents notice her. She coerces her maids into letting her pick out her own clothes in the morning, choosing the brightest and most beautiful robes so that she will stand out as much as possible. She tries to look like a lady, and practices walking around with books from her father's study on her head, so she can stand and sit as ramrod straight as her mother and her mother's friends do. Unfortunately, this backfires a little when the housekeeper finds her in the study, surrounded by shelf upon shelf emptied of expensive books.

Obviously, being a lady requires a bit of mess in the beginning, which she tries to explain to the seething housekeeper, but all she gets is a frustrated huff and an order to stay out of her father's study.

When learning to be a lady doesn't work, she decides that she will start training to become a soldier. Her father deals in war, as will her brother when he comes of age, and that, as her tutors have told her, brings them honor. War, after all, brings the light and greatness of Fire to the other nations. She will fight for the nation, and that will bring her family honor.

Then they will _have _to notice her.

She announces her intention to become a soldier to her father one evening after dinner, as they sit on the porch, Jian in his arms, watching the rose-colored sun bleed into the sea.

He laughs gently – he is a good-natured, if inattentive father – without ever looking at her, and says no, she will not be a soldier. She will be a lady.

That, he tells her, is her duty.

---

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When she is eight years old, she accidentally sets her mother's best dress on fire.

For something that happened when she was eight, she remembers the incident vividly. The dress was made of flowing red and orange silk, edged with gold ribbon and decorated with embroidered fire-lilies. It was a thing of beauty, and more valuable than Ursa herself (her mother's exact words).

She was, of course, not permitted to touch it.

Invitation to mischief that such a rule is, she wastes no time in slipping past her mother's maids and into the wardrobe, where the beautiful mass of red and gold hangs limply from a rod, much less impressive without a body to support it. She wants to touch it, to feel beneath her fingers what she has only imagined before – so she shuffles across the floor to grasp a low-hanging sleeve in her hand.

The silk feels softer than she ever imagined it would, and the feel of the embroidered flowers that emerge from the cloth produce an entirely new sensation. She is so engrossed in the dress that she fails to notice the rising temperature in her fingers and hands, some combustible combination of friction and excitement that spreads outward from her palm and licks gently at the soft material.

She doesn't notice a change, at first – the color of the flames blend nicely with the reds and oranges of the dress. It is only when the smell of smoke brings her mother's maid dashing into the closet that the trance is broken. She yanks her hand away from the gown, leaving a hole the size of her head in the sleeve. The fire, a creeping, slow-burning flame, whispers out without her energy to fuel it, but the scent of burning silk, a uniquely perfumed smoke, still hangs heavy in the air.

Formal firebending training begins two days later – she is a late-blooming bender, and so must make up for lost time. Suddenly Ursa is worth more than the dress, which she never sees her mother wear again.

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At age ten, her mother begins sending her off to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls at the beginning of every autumn. She hates leaving Ember Island, where she can smell the ocean when she wakes up every morning, and practice her bending out on the cliffs – shooting blasts of fire over the edge, seeing how far she can make them travel before they die out a hundred yards across the sea.

The Royal Fire Academy for Girls is in the Capital, surrounded by high-ceilinged manor houses, exclusive boutiques and spas, other highbrow institutions like the Academy, and the sprawling, sumptuous Royal Palace. The high rock walls of the Huan Shu Crater, the capital's natural fortress, keep out the sea breeze Ursa is used to from home, and trap in the cloying scents of money, privilege, and expensive tea (the only thing she _really_ likes about the Capital is that the tea is much, much better here).

At the Academy she learns how to be a lady, how to walk (though without books on her head) and talk and eat and dress and really, it can't be that much different from being a soldier because there is _always _someone telling you what to do all the time – where to sit, how to stand, what to say and how to say it.

What she is pleased to learn is that firebending, for those who have the ability, is a part of the Academy's curriculum. While she is simply passable where most other skills are concerned – she is only an acceptable musician, a rather unaccomplished conversationalist, and her skills in flower arrangement are simply dismal – she excels in firebending. There is something about the _rush_ of handling fire, which is not quite her friend and not quite her enemy (more like an unpredictable partner in crime) that thrills her, that drives her like nothing else does.

Nobody expects this kind of proficiency from her, the awkward ten-year-old from Ember Island who has only been bending for two years, and she rejoices in the freedom that gives her.

She has no duty to the fire that dances around her while she bends, no obligations other than a wary but courteous respect, and it is a beautiful feeling.

---

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She and her family visit the royal palace for the first time on the eve of her fifteenth birthday, as guests at a banquet celebrating Fire Lord Azulon's sixty-fifth birthday. Her impression of the Palace is of a grand, imposing building that seems more like a museum than a home. Every room feels like a display case; wide, sparsely but elegantly furnished spaces surrounded by empty walls and pitiless eyes. Even walking through the corridors alone, with nothing but the _swish _of her new robes against the floor for company, she feels like an artifact on display in a museum.

If the palace itself is bad, the banquet is worse. Her mother shops her around the room for over half of the evening, introducing her to at least thirty different single men of the family's acquaintance with one transparent goal in mind. She even meets the princes, Iroh and Ozai, who strike her as rather dissimilar for brothers. Prince Iroh, who is at least fifteen years older than seventeen-year old Ozai, is a genial and friendly man who speaks of little but his wife, newborn son Lu Ten, and his last game of Pai Sho with Admiral Huzhon for most of the evening.

Ozai, while charming and handsome, has none of his brother's warmth and good will. Ursa is reminded, just a little bit, of the salamander-snakes in the garden on Ember Island, whose beautiful orange-and-gold scales looked beautiful in the sunlight – but were cool to the touch, chilled by the cold blood in the reptile's veins.

The prince, however, seems nice enough, for all that she thinks there is something _else _hiding behind those eyes of his. He compliments her very charmingly on her on her robes and her hair and on her accomplishments at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls (which are few, but it is still nice of him to mention).

He doesn't know that she is a firebender, and when it finds its way into the conversation she sees his eyes light up, that something _else_, she thinks, gleaming with excitement. After some conversation, he asks if she might accompany him to the palace's training grounds the next day, which she thinks is a bit irregular – but her mother, apparently listening to the conversation from three hors d'oeuvres tables away, manages to sidle into the conversation and accept the invitation for her.

Ozai smiles, all smooth charm and the other something she doesn't know well enough to name just yet, and replies that he will look forward to a spar with the lady.

---

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She is seventeen when she is formally introduced at court. At eighteen, she is engaged to Prince Ozai, and four months later, they are married.

The marriage is not entirely one of love, though that is what the serving girls have been whispering and giggling about for months. It is true that she has maintained a cordial and frequent acquaintance with Prince Ozai over the last several years, and that she likes him well enough. She would even say that she cares about him, and in some ways she certainly admires him. He is intelligent, well-spoken, and handsome, full of ambition and headed for success (though what kind of success she isn't sure).

But she does not _love_ her husband. No, she would not say that. She doesn't feel that she needs to. After all, he doesn't love her either.

Ozai says that he loves her, but she knows better. Despite what her husband chooses to pretend, that is not the reason for this match. If anything, Ozai is in love with the _idea_ of her – a noble, dutiful, firebender consort – not with _her_. That _something_ in his eyes, which she knows now is ambition, loves the fact that she is like him in some way, that she knows the bond between fire and firebender. He thinks it will make her useful, that it will make her _understand _his plans and hopes and dreams.

She doesn't understand, not really, but for once in her life she is _important _to someone, which is a novel thing indeed. Ozai does not treat her as if she is a statue made of glass, like her father and her brothers always have, or like an expensive decorative vase, like her mother does (something to brag about when you have guests over, and something to gather dust when you don't). Ozai treats her like an equal, like a _firebender_, regards her as a living weapon just as he regards himself.

So she listens to the plots and the schemes and the grand battle plans, and is careful to treat her husband like one is supposed to treat fire – with respect, with caution, but not quite with love.

Sometimes, she wishes he were _real _fire - that would make things easier. She can restrain fire, can control it and keep it from getting too out of hand. She has achieved that level of control. Ozai makes her feel like a brand-new bender; control slips out of her grasp like smoke, the flames growing bigger and bigger until they are too large for her to manage.

At the end of the day, she feels more like a soldier than the lady she is supposed to be, and retreats to the pond in the back palace garden, where the turtleducks will not mind if she paces and mutters and sends wisps of frustrated, sputtering flame drifting up towards the sky.

Duty leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, and she is forced to remind herself that there is honor in this.


End file.
